Time Budget Survey Research Articles

Calibrating Questionnaires with Weekly Diaries: An Application in Religious Behavior, Netherlands 1975 to 2005

This article presents an innovative approach to improve the power of questionnaires by combining them with weekly diaries. The aim is to show how one can calibrate information collected from questionnaires, which provide a distribution that is in general biased, with diary data, which are more accurate but cannot provide a distribution across a range of frequencies. These problems become even more pronounced when the object of analysis is a specific issue, such as religious practice, the focus of this study. The suggested user-friendly model uses the more accurate diary data to adjust the distribution produced by the standard questions and enables researchers to obviate the problems of the two data collection methods. To present a practical application, the Time Budget Survey, conducted at five-year intervals between 1975 and 2005 in the Netherlands, is used.

Unequal leisure opportunities across genders – overwhelmed women

Leisure is the means of reproducing our energies we lose due to objective and subjective weariness. While the ‘cure’ for objective fatigue is sleeping and resting, the solution for subjective tiredness is leisure and pleasure. We need both to stay healthy. Opportunities to stay healthy are however not equal in our societies: Place of Residence; Race/Ethnicity; Occupation; Gender; Religion; Education; Socio-economic status; and Social capital/Resources (all together referred to as PROGRESS) are the key determinants. In the present paper we highlight at the gender issue from among the key determinants, which status is in strong connection with almost all the above listed features. Throughout history women’s political power, financial status (feminisation of poverty, wage gaps), education and labour market status (vertical and horizontal segregation) were less favourable than men’s. There are stereotypes like women cannot reconcile work and family. Women, who do all or most of the housework spare a lot of expenses for the family, without financial or moral appreciation. The gender-specific analysis of Hungarian time budget surveys performed since 1993 underline several aspects of unequal opportunities of men and women. Women spend more time on socially constrained workload than men, thanks to their unilateral responsibilities in household tasks and child rearing. As 24 h make a day up, regardless of genders, this excess time should be taken away from an other set of activities, namely from leisure. Mothers with small children, women on a maternity leave, housewives and the actively working women have the smallest amount of leisure time. Women with a vocational education and those living in lower status settlements also possess less time for leisure. Analysis by age revealed, that 30–39 and 40–49-year-old women have the least leisure time. The paper also highlights at the health - mental health consequences women suffer from due to the lack of quality leisure time, and suggests the utilisation of an effective time management aided by lifestyle counsellor professionals.

Welfare-state regimes and gender division of housework time in three conurbations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the patterns and determinants of the division of household tasks within couples in countries under different welfare-state regimes.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates data on “urban middle- and upper-class” couples living in New York, Paris or Tokyo area, from a 2007 international comparative time-budget survey carried out at the initiative of the Rengo-Soken Research Institute. Each partner was interviewed separately, offering a unique statistical source for analysing the organisation of domestic time.FindingsThe results shed light on the degree of proximity among the three populations in their housework-sharing arrangements. Greater parity in partners’ housework time is found for the New York couples, regardless of their occupational activity. In Paris and especially in Tokyo, other demands on the partners’ time and the contribution each makes to the household income both impact the actual division of household labour.Research limitations/implicationsThe partners’ gender ideology was not elicited, and inclusion of lower-class couples could change certain results. However, the findings attest to the strong role that welfare-state regime plays in shaping housework time allocation.Originality/valueUnlike other international comparisons, the survey used enables us to ensure strong comparability of measures. The welfare-state regime and family model frameworks clearly highlight the interplay between individual determinants and the institutional context.

Internal dose of particles in the elderly-modeling based on aerosol measurements.

The paper presents an integrated methodology that combines experimental and modeling techniques and links exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) with internal dose in the respiratory system and burden in adjacent tissues over a period of time. The methodology is used to estimate doses in the respiratory systems of elders that reside in 10 elderly care centers (ECCs) in the metropolitan area of Lisbon. Measurements of PM were performed in the ECCs and combined with a time-budget survey for the occupants. This information served as input to the first model that estimated particle doses in the different regions of the respiratory tract of the elderly, and then a second model was used to calculate particle build-up in the alveolar region, the interstitium and the hilar lymph nodes of the elders over a 5-year exposure period. It was found that in 5years of continuous exposure to the average particle concentration measured over all ECCs, 258mg of all particles are deposited on the surface of the alveoli of which 79.6% are cleared, 18.8% are retained in the alveolar region, 1.5% translocate to the hilar lymph nodes, and 0.1% are transferred to the interstitium.

文字の消費時間の推移と文字消費に関するタイポロジー―｢日本人の情報行動調査」から―

文字の消費時間の推移と文字消費に関するタイポロジー―｢日本人の情報行動調査」から―

The transport in our time-budget

Do we save time with our faster transport modes? The answer is, no. The authors answered this question after comparing the average daily per capita transport time-use based on the 1986/87, the 1999/00, and the 2009/10 Hungarian time-budget survey. The average time-use remained between 60 and 65 minutes, same as it was in 1977. During the period studied, the share of the motor/car time-use approximately doubled in the total transport time-use, while the other modes (walking, cycling, and public transports) decreased proportionally. In the same period, there was a wide distribution in the per capita daily transport time-use data influenced by geographical destination choice (in space and time)—and by demographic (age, gender), spatial (county, settlement status), and social (activity, qualification) variables. The paper analysed the effect of the latter explanatory variables on the heterogeneity of the transport time-use. The gender and activity variables can explain motor/car time-use differences; geography and settlement status the bicycle-, and the settlement status also the public transport time-use differences. However, all the explanatory variables analysed could only explain 10% of the divergences.

Modeling Lighting as Part of the USER Model Based on Stochastic Time Budget Survey Data

Precise forecasts of electrical and thermal load profiles are extremely necessary for the preplanning of home energy management systems. In order to synthesize user behavior and load profiles in high time resolution, User Interaction Model has been developed. By using time budget survey data and stochastic modeling, activity profiles of each inhabitant are created based on statistical input data. Mapping of activities to different categories of appliances allows USER to emulate realistic load curves for both single occupants and the entire residential building. This paper especially deals with modeling of energy demand for lighting and the resulting electrical load profiles.

Housework and constructing socialism in the USSR according to time-use surveys

After the October Revolution, the transformation of gender relations was placed at the heart of the Bolshevik project to build socialism in Russia. New ways of organizing domestic life, the workforce and society as a whole would transform relations between men and women. In order for women to play the same part as men in the productive sphere and in social activities, it would be necessary to relieve them from housework, by transferring domestic tasks to collective services. What was the situation in reality? Data produced by the family time-budget surveys carried out in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s and then in the late 1960s-early 1970s provides information allowing us to compare the reality of gender relations with official discourse in Soviet Russia.

Too Busy to Eat with the Kids? Parental Work and Children's Eating

AbstractParents influence their children's eating behavior by providing access to certain types of food, creating enjoyable mealtimes and associations with food, and by role modeling. In this study we investigate the association between parental employment and parental time spent eating with their children. Using data from the 2001/02 German Time Budget Survey, we explore associations between time spent eating with children and labor force participation in Germany. We find that parental labor force participation is negatively associated with time spent eating with children. Each additional hour of work per day by the mother is associated with a 2.4 minute decrease in the amount of time the mother spends eating with her children. For paternal hours of work, we find that the more time a father spends working, the less time the child spends eating with the father or with both parents. Overall, we find evidence of mother inter‐gender time substitution and some amount of time/food away from home substitution. Understanding how parents allocate their time, where they are most likely to eat, and what drives these decisions is an important endeavor since parents play a critical role in shaping and reinforcing their children's eating practices.

Elderly exposure to indoor air pollutants

The aim of this work was to characterize the indoor air quality in Elderly Care Centers (ECCs) in order to assess the elders' daily exposure to air pollutants. Ten ECCs hosting 384 elderly were selected in Lisbon and Loures. Firstly, a time-budget survey was created based on questionnaires applied in the studied sites. Results showed that in average elders spend 95% of their time indoors splitted between bedrooms and living-rooms. Therefore, a set of physical and chemical parameters were measured continuously during the occupancy period in these two indoor micro-environments and in the outdoor. Results showed that indoor was the main environment contributing for the elders' daily exposure living in ECCs. In the indoor, the principal micro-environment contributing for the elders' daily exposure varied between bedrooms and living-rooms depending not only on the characteristics of the ECCs but also on the pollutants. The concentrations of CO2, VOCt, O3 and PM10 exceeded the limit values predominantly due to the insufficient ventilation preconized in the studied sites.

自己組織化マップによる業務行為パターンの抽出

Twelve distinctive daily work-styles concerning time-series working behavior were extracted from the result of the time-budget survey for knowledge workers by using a self-organizing map of the data mining technique. The extracted work-styles correlated with the workers' status. The workers tend to change and combine working place, content and co-worker based on the solo work on ones' desk particularly at the beginning and end of the office hours.The presented method of incorporating the time-budget survey and the self-organizing map has possibilities to restructure a conventional office layout or a manner of operation, in terms of contributing to the office planning based on an evidence of current working behavior.

Associations between maternal employment and time spent in nutrition-related behaviours among German children and mothers

To examine associations between maternal employment and time spent engaging in nutrition-related behaviours among mothers and children using a nationally representative sample of households in West and East Germany. A cross-sectional analysis was performed using time-use data for a sample of mother-child dyads. Associations between maternal employment and time spent in nutrition-related activities such as eating at home, eating away from home and food preparation were estimated using a double-hurdle model. German Time Budget Survey 2001/02. The overall sample included 1071 households with a child between 10 and 17 years of age. The time-use data were collected for a 3 d period of observation (two weekdays and one weekend day). Maternal employment was associated with the time children spent on nutrition-related behaviours. In households with employed mothers, children spent more time eating alone at home and less time eating meals with their mothers. Moreover, employed mothers spent less time on meal preparation compared with non-employed mothers. There were regional differences in time spent on nutrition-related behaviours, such that East German children were more likely to eat at home alone than West German children. Maternal employment was associated with less time spent eating with children and preparing food, which may be related to the increasing childhood obesity rates in Germany. Future national surveys that collect both time-use data and health outcomes could yield further insight into mechanisms by which maternal time use might be associated with health outcomes among children.

Factors affecting detection probability of burrowing owls in southwest agroecosystem environments

AbstractEstimating range‐wide population trends of western burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) requires standardized survey protocols that correct for detection bias in environments that support large owl populations. High concentrations of owls exist in irrigated agroecosystems within the southwest United States, yet little is known about the factors that affect detection bias during owl surveys in these systems. I used closed‐population capture‐recapture models to evaluate 4 factors that could affect the probability of a surveyor detecting an owl activity center (i.e., nest burrow) during visual surveys where owls are the focal object and analyzed the relationship (linear or curvilinear) between specific factors and detection probability. I recorded 1,199 detections of owls from 132 capture‐recapture surveys within 12 sites of the Imperial Valley agroecosystem in California, USA between 16 April and 20 May 2006. I also conducted 96 time budget surveys throughout the day and used mixed linear models to evaluate the effect of each factor on probability of an owl activity center being available for detection (i.e., ≥1 owls above ground) during surveys. Model selection results indicated that detection probability was influenced by ambient air temperature interacting with wind speed. Detection probability followed a curvilinear relationship that resembled bell‐shaped curve along a temperature gradient, with the maximum detection probability shifting as a function of wind speed. At low temperatures, detection probability declined with increased wind speed, but this relationship was reversed at high temperatures, producing a 3‐dimensional pattern in detection probability characterized by a saddle‐shaped hyperbolic paraboloid response surface. The probability of an activity center being available for detection declined curvilinearly with increased temperature and explained 51% of the variation in detection probability. Given the broad range of detection probabilities, correcting visual survey counts for detection bias is necessary for comparing population estimates among regions and through time. Survey designs intended to estimate abundance of owls in southwest agroecosystems should incorporate methods to estimate and correct for variation in detection probability that include measurements of ambient temperature and wind speed for use as covariates. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.

The 24-h distribution of falls and person-hours of physical activity in the home are strongly associated among community dwelling older persons

ObjectivesMost research on falls among older persons focuses on health-related factors that affect the ability to maintain balance. The objective of the study is to determine the association between physical...

Food preparation patterns in German family households. An econometric approach with time budget data

In Germany, the rising importance of out-of-home consumption, increasing usage of convenience products and decreasing knowledge of younger individuals how to prepare traditional dishes can be seen as obvious indicators for shifting patterns in food preparation. In this paper, econometric analyses are used to shed more light on the factors which may influence the time spent on food preparation in two-parent family households with children. Two time budget surveys, carried out 1991/92 and 2001/02 through the German National Statistical Office, provide the necessary data. Time budget data analyses reveal that over the last ten years the time spent on food preparation in Germany has decreased. The results point out that time resources of a household, for example gainful employment of the parents, significantly affect the amount of time spent on food preparation. The analysis confirms further that there is a more equal allocation of time spent on cooking, baking or laying the table between women and men in the last ten years. Due to changing attitudes and conceivably adaption of economic conditions, differences in time devoted to food preparation seem to have vanished between Eastern and Western Germany. Greater time spent on eating out in Germany as well as decreasing time spent on food preparation at home reveal that the food provisioning of families is no longer a primarily private task of the households themselves but needs more public attention and institutional offers and help. Among other points, the possibility of addressing mothers’ lack of time as well as growing “food illiteracy” of children and young adults are discussed.

The Timing of Daily Demand for Goods and Services—Microsimulation Policy Results of an Aging Society, Increasing Labour Market Flexibility, and Extended Public Childcare in Germany

Knowledge about the timing of consumption opens new insights into consumption behaviour for consumer, economic, social, as well as for communal and societal policies. It not only allows sound information for a better match of timely supply and demand but also about everyday living arrangements. This study contributes to the timing aspect of daily consumption by posing the question: How is the timing of daily demand for goods and services affected by major changes in German society? We concentrate on important and currently discussed developments and policies: the huge shift in Germany’s demographic structure with an aging society (with a population forecast for 2020 by the German Federal Statistical Office), the deregulation and the further expansion in flexibility of the labour market, and the current policy of extending public childcare support. For each aspect and policy, we first describe the actual timing of daily demand for goods and services. With the microsimulation approach and different scenarios, we then quantify the respective societal and policy impacts based on more than 37 000 time-use diaries of the current German Time Budget Survey of 2001/2002.

Timing and fragmentation of daily working hours arrangements and income inequality – An earnings treatment effects approach with German time use diary data

Traditional well-being analyses based on money income needs to be broadened by its time dimension. In the course of time the traditional full-time work is diminishing and new labour arrangements are discussed (keyword: flexible labour markets) with consequences on the daily work arrangements. Our study is contributing to the research on economic well-being and working hours arrangements by adding insights into particular daily work effort characteristics and its resulting income distribution. The work effort characteristics we regard is about labour market flexibility with focus on relations between the daily timing of work and its fragmentation, and its consequences on the income distribution. Whereas the first part of our study is describing the distribution of timing and fragmentation of daily work time and its resulting income based on more than 35.000 diaries of the most recent German Time Budget Survey 2001/2002, the second part of our study quantifies determinants of arrangement specific earnings functions detecting significant explanatory patterns of what is behind. The related economic theory is a human capital approach in a market and non-market context, extended by non-market time use, the partner’s working condition, social networking as well as household and regional characteristics. The econometrics use a treatment effects type interdependent estimation of endogenous participation in a daily working hour pattern (self-selection) and pattern specific earnings function explanation. The overall result: Individual earnings in Germany are dependent on and significant different with regard to the daily working hours arrangement capturing timing and fragmentation of work. Market and non-market factors are important and significant in explaining participation and earnings thereof.

The Timing of Daily Demand for Goods and Services - Multivariate Probit Estimates and Microsimulation Results for an Aged Population with German Time Use Diary Data

Though consumption research provides a broad spectrum of theoretical and empirical founded results, studies based on a daily focus are missing. Knowledge about the individual timing of daily demand for goods and services, opens - beyond a genuine contribution to consumption research - interesting societal and macro economic as well as individual personal and firm perspectives: it is important for an efficient timely coordination of supply and demand in the timing perspective as well as for a targeted economic, social and societal policy for a better support of the every day coordination of life. Last not least, the individual daily public and private living situations will be visible, which are of particular importance for the social togetherness in family and society. Our study contributes to the timing of daily consumption for goods and services with an empirical founded microanalysis on the basis of more than 37.000 individual time use diaries of the nationwide Time Budget Survey of the German Federal Statistical Office 2001/02. We describe the individual timing of daily demand for goods and services for important socio-demographic groups like for women and men, the economic situation with income poverty and daily working hour arrangements. The multivariate microeconometric explanation of the daily demand for goods and services is based on a latent utility maximizing approach over a day. We estimate an eight equation Multivariate/Simultaneous Probit Model, which allows the decision for multiple consumption activities in more than one time period a day. The estimates quantify effects on the timing of daily demand by individual socio-economic variables, which encompasses, personal, household, regional characteristics as well as daily working hour arrangements within a flexible labour market. The question about individual effects of an aged society on the timing of daily demand for goods and services is analyzed with our microsimulation model ServSim and a population forecast for 2020 by the German Federal Statistical Office. Main result: There are significant differences in explaining the timing of daily demand for goods compared to services on the one hand and in particular for different daily time periods. The conclusion: without the timing aspects an important and significant dimension for understanding individual consumption behaviour and their impacts on other individual living conditions would be missing.

Working Hour Arrangements and Pay - A Treatment Effects Approach for Professions, Entrepeneurs and Employees

Traditional welfare analyses based on money income needs to be broadened by its time dimension. In the course of time the traditional full-time work is diminishing and new labour arrangements are discussed (keyword: flexible labour markets). Our study is contributing to economic well-being by adding insights into particular work effort characteristics and its resulting income distribution. With our focus on 'who is working when within a day with which earnings consequences' we go beyond traditional labour market analyses with its working time division into aggregated full and part time work, working hours spread across a week and weekend etc. Whereas the first part of our study is describing the distribution of timing and fragmentation of daily work time and its resulting income based on more than 35.000 diaries of the recent German Time Budget Survey 2001/2002, the second part of our study quantifies determinants of arrangement specific earnings functions detecting significant explanatory pattern of what is behind. The economic theory behind is a human capital approach in a market and non-market context, extended by non-market time use, the partner's working condition, social networking as well as household and regional characteristics. The econometrics use a treatment effects type interdependent estimation of endogenous participation (selection) in a daily working hour pattern (selfselection) and pattern specific earnings function explanation.

Daily Working Hour Arrangments and Income of Liberal Professions - New Results from the German Time Use Survey

Individual welfare analysis traditionally concentrates on monetary income. Recently the time dimension - the time needed to achieve income - is gaining importance (flexible working hours) for the analysis of income inequalities. Using the German Time Budget Survey 2001/2002 our study examines how the income distribution is influenced by daily working hour arrangements (timing and fragmentation of work). In particular, we investigate the question, if there are significant differences in the daily working hour arrangements between (liberal) professions, entrepreneurs and employees. Further we study how the principal higher time sovereignty of self-employed affects individual income. With our microeconometric analysis we determine which factors significantly contribute to the choice of a daily working hour arrangement as well as to the associated income of professions in particular.